Morphological characterization of the ovary under normal cycling in rats and its viewpoints of ovarian toxicity detection.

Identification of ovarian toxicity is very important for safety assessment of drugs and other environmental chemicals. The detection of interference with ovarian function is very hard without a thorough understanding of the normal ovarian morphology based on reproductive physiology. The focus of the present study was therefore a practical analysis in each stage of the estrous cycles using ovaries obtained from 143 rats demonstrating normal cycling.